Parolee tied to 3 women's slayings

Mt. Vernon man said to admit to cold cases

Dec. 10, 2012

Lucius Crawford

Written by

and Jonathan Bandler

Mount Vernon Police Commissioner Carl Bell and Mayor Ernie Davis announce the arrest of Lucius Crawford, 60, of Mount Vernon in the slaying of a woman found at his apartment. / Ricky Flores/The Journal News

Timeline

May 15, 1973: Lucius Crawford, then 20, approached a female stranger in Charleston, S.C., and made remarks about having sex with her. She picked up a stick to defend herself, and he pulled out a knife and cut her across the left arm. May 16, 1973: Approached a female stranger in Charleston and tried to talk to her. When she walked away, he came up behind her and severely cut the back of her right leg with a butcher knife. May 17, 1973: Cut the left leg of a female stranger in Charleston after she wouldn’t speak with him. May 19, 1973: Stabbed a woman twice in each leg after she walked away from him when he tried to speak with her. He was charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill. He was later convicted and incarcerated. December 1976: Released from custody. April 8, 1977: In separate incidents, Crawford stabbed a 28-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl in the abdomen as they walked down the street in Charleston. April 9, 1977: Stabbed a 17-year-old girl in the back, right hip and arm as she stood in her front yard. April 27, 1977: Arrested for stabbing four females over a five-day period in Charleston. He was charged with four counts of assault with intent to kill. The victims’ ages ranged from 14 to 28. June 17, 1977: Sentenced to 24 years in prison. He began his incarceration June 22, 1977. February 1, 1991: Released from custody. September 27, 1991: Charged with third-degree assault in White Plains after punching a 33-year-old former girlfriend in the mouth. He had been living in a men’s shelter in Greenburgh. He was convicted and sentenced to 184 days in the Westchester County jail. December 5, 1991: Released from custody. May 10, 1994: Charged with attempted murder after stabbing a 31-year-old co-worker 13 times after stalking her when she rebuffed his sexual advances. He later pleaded guilty. March 31, 1995: Sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. February 8, 2008: Released from custody, on parole, and was currently pursuing his GED.

Source: New York Police Department

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MOUNT VERNON — A parolee charged with fatally stabbing a 42-year-old woman Tuesday has admitted to killing not only her but also two women from Yonkers nearly two decades ago, authorities said Wednesday.

Lucius Crawford, 60, was charged with second-degree murder in the slaying of Tonya Simmons, who was killed in his basement apartment at 7 Beekman Ave. Simmons, a New Rochelle resident, was stabbed at least nine times in the chest, and her body was discovered Tuesday afternoon under the covers of Crawford’s bed, police said.

After his arrest, authorities said, Crawford admitted to the slaying and to two cold-case killings — the stabbing deaths of Learonda Shealy, 23, and Nella West, Yonkers residents who knew each other and lived in the Schroeder Street area. Shealy was killed on Walsh Road in Yonkers in September 1993, and West was killed on the Bronx side of the Bronx-Yonkers border five weeks later.

“This is probably the closest we’ve had to a serial killer in Mount Vernon,” city Police Commissioner Carl Bell said at a news conference.

Crawford, who lived in Mount Vernon for a year and a half, told police he would befriend the women and then assault them, and that he had “anger” issues, Bell said.

Mount Vernon Police Chief John Roland said Crawford “knew all of his victims in one manner or the other” and attacked them when he felt “scorned.”

Crawford said nothing and did not enter a plea Wednesday during a brief arraignment in City Court before Judge Mark A. Gross. He was wearing a hospital gown, though no information was given as to why. Two female relatives of Simmons’ were in court, but they left in tears, declining to speak with reporters after the arraignment.

Crawford has not yet been charged in the 1993 slayings. He was represented by Vincent DeMarte of Legal Aid Society of Westchester. Crawford was held without bail. He is due in City Court on Monday.

In the Mount Vernon case, police said Crawford was the one who twice phoned them to report that a woman was injured in the apartment. He did not identify himself but told police later that he made the calls.

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Mount Vernon police responded early Tuesday afternoon, but Simmons’ body was discovered shortly before they arrived by other officers — a state parole officer from New Rochelle and Bronx homicide detectives — who went to the apartment as part of an investigation into the cold-case killings in Yonkers and the Bronx.

Yonkers cold-case detectives investigating Crawford in the Shealy homicide teamed up with New York City police after Bronx detectives submitted biological evidence recovered from West’s killing and got a possible DNA match to Crawford, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne of the New York Police Departmen said in a statement.

Browne said the Bronx detectives had planned to take Crawford into custody when they went to his home — but his statement did not indicate when the DNA match to Crawford was discovered. Yonkers police said the joint investigation of Crawford began in July.

He said that Crawford’s extensive history of violence toward women led NYPD detectives to notify Suffolk County police about the arrest. He referred to “open investigations” in Suffolk but did not specifically cite the case of bodies dumped in the area of Gilgo Beach.

Suffolk County police said they have no reason to believe Crawford was involved in the Gilgo deaths but are reaching out to Mount Vernon detectives to rule him out as a possible suspect.

Crawford had shed the parole anklet he was required to wear and left it in his apartment, police said. About three hours after the body was discovered, two Mount Vernon officers saw him near Hussey Road and East Grand Street and he tried to walk away, police said, but they took him into custody.

Mount Vernon police had not known that Crawford was being investigated by Yonkers police and the Bronx detectives in the cold-case killings, Bell said.

“This was the first time we heard his name,” the commissioner said.

Crawford already has served 30 years in prison, including for the near-fatal attack on a female co-worker in 1994.

He was paroled in February 2008, after serving 13 years for the attempted murder.

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He has lived alone at 7 Beekman Ave. for more than a year.

Crawford moved to Westchester County in 1991 after his release from a South Carolina prison, where he had served two terms totaling 17 years for stabbing at least seven women.

Within months of his arrival in New York, he attacked a woman in White Plains and was convicted of misdemeanor assault, serving six months in the county jail.

Crawford is now telling authorities that he got violent again — with fatal results — in late 1993.

On Sept. 13, 1993, a maintenance worker found Learonda Shealy’s body in the eighth-floor stairwell of 57 Walsh Road. Shealy, who had a history of prostitution arrests, had been stabbed multiple times in the stomach.

The following month, the body of a 37-year-old prostitute, Nella West, was discovered dumped on Liebig Avenue in the Bronx. She had been stabbed multiple times in the head, face and chest and suffered a broken eye socket and crushed skull.

But authorities never caught up with Crawford, and on May 10, 1994, he stabbed a 31-year-old Yonkers woman — a co-worker at a job placement agency — who had refused to date him. He pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.

Authorities reached out to the woman Tuesday afternoon to let her know Crawford was suspected of striking again. She did not return a reporter’s phone calls.

Crawford was denied parole twice — in 2004 and 2006. But he was released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility on Feb. 8, 2008, when he reached his conditional release date — the point where an inmate serving an indeterminate sentence has served two-thirds of his maximum sentence.

His release was delayed five months because of a poor disciplinary record in prison. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said Crawford had seven “disciplinary incidents” between October 1996 and September 2006.

In each case he was cited for refusing a direct order, but he also was accused of violent conduct in two instances and creating a disturbance in four of the cases.

Coincidentally, Mount Vernon Mayor Ernest Davis said he met Tuesday with about 20 Mount Vernon clergymen to come up with ways to stop homicides and shootings in the city.

“I hope society never puts him in a position that he can hurt people again,” Davis said of Crawford. “This is a person who needs psychiatric help.”